Hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists will gather starting today in Sturgis, South Dakota. SD was the only state that did not attempt to lock its residents down (though unionized schoolteachers were protected from potential harm via a public school shutdown!).
If you see anyone wearing one of these T-shirts:
it might be time to deliver some unsolicited Covid-19 education, perhaps quoting from the twin saints Fauci and Cuomo. And to gently suggest a mask to match the following more traditional Harley-rider T-shirt:
I would pay to watch a Bay Area or Maskachusetts Shutdown Karen trying to re-educate a group of Harley riders!
Maybe EAA AirVenture needs to be moved to South Dakota where it can be safe from the Wisconsin governor’s whims! Call it “Oshkosh in Sturgis”? The 5100′ runway of 49B would not support a lot of the aircraft that come into KOSH. Maybe come to an arrangement with Sioux Falls? Two huge runways, just like KOSH (though, unfortunately, intersecting). My personal favorite airport in SD is the “Philip Airport”, and I have actually landed there and purchased self-serve fuel. But the 4000′ runway will never work.
Related:
- “‘If We Get It, We Chose to Be Here’: Despite Virus, Thousands Converge on Sturgis for Huge Rally” (NYT): Attendance on Friday was on par with previous years, said Dan Ainslie, City Manager for Sturgis. … The rally, which has taken place every summer in Sturgis since 1938, commenced amid strong objections from residents. In a city-sponsored survey, more than 60 percent of the nearly 7,000 residents favored postponing the event. … Little could be done to stop the event, said Doreen Allison Creed, the Meade County commissioner who represents Sturgis. Ms. Creed said the county lacked the authority to shut down the rally because much of it takes place on state-licensed campgrounds. When it became clear that it would go on as planned, the city said in a news release that changes would be made to safeguard residents from the coronavirus, including adding hand-sanitizing stations to the downtown area. The city plans to offer coronavirus testing for its residents once the rally concludes on Aug. 16. (This puts South Dakota/Sturgis on the same level as never-shut Belarus! Sweden’s rules, in place since March, wouldn’t allow a gathering of more than 50 people. So the U.S. has whipsawed through ordering people to stay at home to gathering by the hundreds of thousands.)
Well, it’s Sturgis, it’s hard to cancel, but it’ll be quite a bit smaller than years past. The businesses in and around Sturgis say they lose money 355 days of the year waiting for 10 days of the rally. In 2015 attendance hit a peak of 750,000 and this year they expect about 1/3rd of that. The city didn’t try to stop the rally but it’s not hosting any official events. NPR has at least one reporter on the ground wagging his finger.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899881955/south-dakota-motorcycle-rally-to-take-place-despite-local-opposition
“WOODRUFF: People will come up to me and say, oh, God, thank you, Woody, for having this thing. Thank you for not canceling. We are looking so forward to this. We’ve been looking forward to it. And so it’s just congratulations and thank you, appreciation for having someplace to go and, you know, to quote one of these guys, you know, to just escape that communist cesspool back home, right?”
Meanwhile, in that communist cesspool of the Hamptons, John Paulson is hosting a $500,000/couple Trump fundraiser this weekend. I wonder what the t-shirts look like, and if Molly Hatchet and Quiet Riot, et. al., are scheduled to play.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/07/trump-fundraiser-to-be-hosted-by-billionaire-john-paulson-in-hamptons.html
Do they do wet t-shirt and full nude contests in the Hamptons? Or is it less “Show us Your Ti*s!” and more “Show us Your Sunseeker!”
https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts-for-sale/biancino–83679
Sioux Falls? You’re forgetting about the much-nearer Rapid City, which has the added advantage of the airport identifier KRAP! Think of all the KRAP-themed t-shirts they could sell at the FBO! At 8700 feet long, that runway ought to be able to handle just about anything. Plus, there’s nearby Ellsworth AFB (runway length 13,500 feet!) which occasionally gets aircraft mistakenly landing there instead of their intended destination of KRAP. (Wayward aircraft are greeted by M16-toting MPs).
Given that the U.S. has been defeated by a virus, and therefore could be trivially knocked over by a determined foe (e.g., Russia or China), maybe Ellsworth could be shut down as an Air Force Base and turned into an EAA gathering spot. What is the point of continuing to fund this huge military if Americans are going to spend the next few decades cowering in place from various viruses?
A fews years ago we stopped at KRAP on the way to Oshkosh. When we left we wanted to tour Ellsworth AFB and look at all of their b1 bombers. The lady in the tower was very nice and cleared us for a long slow pass down the runway. We were told we could do anything we wanted but just don’t let the tires touch the ground.
Last night I was in a suitably dour frame of mind and realized that this may well be the last Sturgis rally. Consider:
The Town Council of Sturgis voted 8-1 in favor of hosting the rally, but really only because they thought they couldn’t stop it from happening despite 60% of the Town’s residents saying they didn’t want it. Most of the advocacy came from businesses that stand to go broke, but nobody is going to care about businesses in the next Administration. The bikers themselves are also trending older and more risk-averse, more gentrified and “Born to be Mild” than “Born to be Wild.”
After this thing is over, if there’s any outbreak that can be traced back to the event, next year the scrutiny and objections to the rally will be so gigantic that the Governor of South Dakota will have to involved and cancel the thing. We know that the first person in Sturgis who dies of COVID is going to be front page news in the New York Times.
Since the pandemic is never going away, the lockdowns are never going away, [see Osterholm in Market Watch: “We will be dealing with this virus forever.” https://www.marketwatch.com/story/osterholm-americans-will-be-living-with-the-coronavirus-for-decades-2020-07-30 ] and we’re going to have a figurehead Biden leading a Socialist government run by activists from Harvard TH Chan for public health and the Jacobin (https://jacobinmag.com/) for economic and foreign policy, cheered on by the national media, NPR, etc., etc., I don’t see how they’ll be able to host the rally next year. Only the hard-core bikers will try to stage some kind of Battle of Little Bighorn against Elizabeth Warren’s army, and they’ll lose. A lot of them are Trump voters anyway, and we know how much she’s going care about them. These people are made of raw, unrefined Deplorable and the sooner they disappear, the better.
In other words, I predict that this year will result in a media nightmare by September that will close the curtain on Sturgis for all time.
It looks like it’s already dwindling. I’m watching the webcams in downtown Sturgis right now and it looks pretty tame. It’s 10 AM and there are more cars and SUVs than bikes on the street, not a good sign for “the world’s largest motorcycle rally”.
https://rallysturgis.com/webcams
Here in the Northeast, it’s crunch time for Laconia Bike Week (97 years – older than Sturgis!) in “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire. It was postponed once this year, but is still scheduled to take place August 22-30 over the objections of the Laconia Chief of Police.
https://laconiamcweek.com/
All the vendors have been banned, however, and I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure in the coming days to pull the plug, depending on what happens in Sturgis. Of course, it won’t take much of a blip in the stats. to send New Hampshire over the edge, and any bad news coming out of Sturgis will be amplified through a nuclear-powered megaphone.
https://www.unionleader.com/nh/travel/attractions/crowding-concerns-raised-over-motorcycle-week-laconia-chief-wants-it-canceled/article_5fc6df75-b98c-5ed3-9eb9-caa2c5d65c5a.html
“The city council voted unanimously July 13 to allow the rally but reserved the right to cancel if COVID-19 infection data from the state Department of Public Health indicate an increased risk.”
They should have Just rename “Sturgis” to “Sturgis for BLM” and no one will object. In fact, you will get the support of the community and the authorities. And if there is a COVID-19 outbreak from it, it will be acceptable because it was for a good cause.